Two
bombings in mid February near Zahedan in southeastern Iran are
the latest in a series of high profile incidents involving armed
opposition groups based among the country’s ethnic minorities.
The most recent attacks again raise questions about the activities
of Iranian clandestine groups, seeking a regime change, with,
or without US assistance. Zahedan is the capital of Sistan-Baluchistan
province, which borders Pakistan and Afghanistan and is home
to Iran’s estimated 1-2 million ethnic Sunni Baluchis.
The first blast killed at least 11 members of Iran’s Islamic
Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) who were travelling in a bus
from their housing compound to a nearby military base. A further
bombing, followed by sustained clashes between police and an
armed group, named Jundallah, a Sunni extremist organisation
based among Iran’s Baluch minority. Sistan va Baluchistan
straddles the main drug-trafficking route from Afghanistan and
Pakistan to Europe and is among the poorest and the most lawless
provinces in the country. Many locals resort to drug trafficking
and smuggling in order to survive.

The
Provincial police commander Brigadier General Mohammad Ghafari
said a total of 65 suspects had been detained over the Zahedan
attack, including three who were believed to have actually carried
it out. He renewed Iranian accusations that Jundullah was receiving
support from British and US forces in neighboring Afghanistan
for its campaign of violence in Sistan-Baluchestan. A man identified
as Nasrollah Shanbe Zehi was executed at the site of the attack
in Zahedan, after having confessed on Iranian state TV to be
involved in the bomb attack.

The Sunni militant group Jundullah (army of god), operating
in Baluchistan seems to be an offshoot of a terrorist network
based in Pakistan and is allegedly fighting to establish a unified,
independent Baluchistan. Formed in 2003 it is led by Abdul Malik
Rigi, who in his mid-twenties, goes by the title 'Emir Abdul
Malik Baluch. In March 2006 members of the group dressed in
police uniforms attacked the motorcade of the governor of Zahedan,
killing 22 members of his entourage on the spot and abducting
12 more. The governor himself was badly wounded but survived.

By his own undoing, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
is building up the growing ethnic opposition camp against
the centralist cleric Shiite rule in Tehran.

While no definite proof has surfaced over any direct, or indirect
involvement of American intelligence agencies in the latest
bombing in Zahedan, the US should certainly be interested inflaming
ethnic and political opposition inside Iran.

Analiysts estimate that sectors of the Baluch elite who, like
their counterparts among Iran’s Azeri, Kurdish, Arab and
other minorities, are considered having potential benefits of
aligning themselves with Washington in a future military conflict
with Iran. US support for such layers could create an even greater
catastrophe than in neighbouring Iraq, where the American-led
invasion has triggered an escalating sectarian civil war.

In fact by his own undoing, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is
building up the growing ethnic opposition camp against the centralist
cleric Shiite rule in Tehran. According to James Woolsey, former
director of CIA, a bare majority of Persians rule restive minorities
of Arabs, Azeris, Kurds, Baluch, and others. Just as is needed
to exploit the resistance to the regime among the younger people,
reformers, and women, Washington should also need to pay attention
to its geographic and ethnic fissures - for example, a large
share of Iran's oil is located in the restive Arab-populated
regions in Iran's south.

Although
Iran’s state religion is Shiite Islam and the majority
of its population is ethnically Persian, millions of minorities
from various ethnic, religious, and linguistic backgrounds also
reside in Iran. Among these groups are ethnic Kurds, Baluchis,
and Azeris. Many of them face discrimination and live in underdeveloped
regions. Though they have held protests in the past, they mostly
agitate for greater rights, not greater autonomy. But this could
change, if a US sponsored regime change is forseen.

Roughly one out of every four Iranians is Azeri, making it
Iran’s largest ethnic minority at over eighteen million.
The Turkic-speaking Azeri community is Shiite and resides mainly
in northwest Iran along the border with Azerbaijan.

The Azeri minority is based predominately in the country's
northwest, what is called the Northern Tier of the Middle East,
where Iran shares borders with Turkey and with the South Caucasus
states of Azerbaijan and Armenia. The ethnic links between the
Azeri of northern Iran and Azerbaijan were long exploited by
the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and this vehicle for internal
manipulation has been seized upon by CIA paramilitary operatives
and US Special Operations units who are training with Azerbaijan
forces to form special units capable of operating inside Iran
for the purpose of intelligence gathering, direct action, and
mobilising indigenous opposition to the Mullahs in Tehran.

But there are more foreboding signals already in store. Last
May, rioting started in the northern Iranian city of Tabriz
allegedly sparked off by a state-run newspaper publishing a
cartoon depicting a cockroach speaking Azeri. Despite official
efforts to stem discontent by punishing the newspaper editors,
fighting quickly escalated following the usual strongarm response
by Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ anti-riot units
and Basij militias against the Azeri protesters. Soon after,
Iranian security forces cracked down on tens thousands of offended
Azeris, taking to the streets in Tehran and in the major northwestern
Iranian cities such as Tabriz, Urumieh, Ardebil, Maragheh, and
Zenjan. A massive detention campaign followed, but failed to
calm the outrage, which spread like bushfire, with nearly 100
Azeris beeing killed in the town of Sulduz. The Tehran central
government, was quick to accuse foreign elements stirring up
the unrest, in effort to undermine Tehran's nuclear program.

In spite of this and other incidents, leading analysts estimate,
that while Iranian Azeris may seek greater cultural rights,
few Iranian Azeris sofar display serious separatist tendencies,
or serious aspirations toward an all out uprising against the
Tehranj Mullah rule. Still, the central government is extremely
sensitive over possible changes of attitudes among the Azeris.
Last June an attempt to hold rally at Bazz (Babek) Castle in
northwestern Iran to commemorate the birthday of the Azeri national
hero, Babek, who organized resistance against Arab invaders
in the 9th century, prompted an unprecedented wave of arrests
among Azeris in a number of Iranian cities.

Unlike other ethnic groups in Iran such as Sunni Kurds and
Khuzestan Arabs, the Azeri Turks are Shiites like the ruling
Persians. Having been separated from their kin in Azerbaijan
by the 1828 Treaty of Turkmanchai, which gave northern Azerbaijan
to Russia, it is interesting to note, that in spite of influential
figures in the establishment, even such as Supreme Leader Ayatollah
Ali Khamenei, being of Azeri descent, the Tehran mullahs do
not hesitate to crack down hard on Azeri- Turkish nationalism.
An Azeri secret organisation named Azerbaijan National Awakening
Movement (Gamoh), is regarded officially as a subversive element,
its leaders often arrested and sometimes even executed without
trial.

The plight of Iranian Azeris is followed closely by their neighboring
kin in Azerbaijan and Turkey. However, officially, the Azerbaijani
and Turkish governments are extremely cautious not to damage
their sensitive relations with the Iranian government. eBut
to the north, to the north, in neighbouring Azerbaijan, strange
things are happening already. Unofficial reports indicate the
US military preparing a base of operations for a massive military
presence that could foretell a major land-based campaign designed
to infiltrate into Iranian territory when the time is ripe for
action. While Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld's interest
in Azerbaijan may have escaped the Western media, Russia and
the Caucasus nations understand only too well that the die has
been cast regarding Azerbaijan's role in the upcoming war with
Iran.

Meanwhile, another source of ethnic unrest in Iran is building
up among the Kurds. Persisting reports, by news networks, indicate
that US intelligence teams, operating with Kurdish groups are
training infiltrators to gather information on potential targets
inside Iran and encourage armed opposition among the Kurdish
minority. A little-known clandestine organization based in the
mountains of Iraq's Kurdish north is already emerging as a serious
threat to the Iranian government, allegedly staging cross-border
attacks and claiming tens of thousands of supporters among Iran's
4 million Kurds. Identified as Partiya Jiyana Azad a Kurdistanê
("Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan"), but better
known by the local acronym PEJAK or PJAK, is considered to be
a splinter group of the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers Party. The
group claimed to have killed 24 Iranian soldiers from Iran's
elite Republican Guard in three raids against army bases last
year, all staged in retaliation for the killing of 10 Iranian
Kurds during a peaceful demonstration in the city of Maku. The
present leader of the organisation is Haji Ahmadi. According
to intelligence reports, over half the members of PJAK are women,
many of them still in their teens. One of the female members
of the leadership council goes by the name of Gulistan Dugan,
a psychology graduate from the University of Tehran. Analysts
claim, that the greater threat to the Tehran regime may come
from the group's underground effort to promote a sense of identity
among Iranian Kurds, who make up 7 percent of that country's
population. PEJAK leaders predict that their effort is already
spreading quickly among students, intellectuals and businessmen.
It is interesting to note that unlike most other rebel groups
in the Middle East, PEJAK is secular and Western-oriented. However,
the group's leaders insist that while they have had sofar no
contact with the United States, they would be willing to work
with Europe or America against the Tehran government.

Another source of unrest seems to be flaring up in a remote
area of Iran, where central official control is faltering. Last
month and armed revolt instigated by Bakhtiari, Lor and Ghashghai
tribes comprising over three million, against the Islamic Regime
was reported by clandestine news networks. There were claims
of freedom seeking tribal fighters in the Isfahan and surrounding
provinces which began fighting local Islamic Regime forces in
an attempt to free their villages from the Islamic Regime's
control. According to these reports, the Semirom area, some
590km from Tehran, which is on the Ghashghai tribal migrations
route, apparently saw heavy fighting occurred in between Isfahan
Province and Yassooj further south, which is the center of the
Boyer-Ahmadi tribal territory. Local fighters from the various
tribes, confronted Islamic Regime paramilitary forces –
the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) and the Bassij
. The heaviest fighting took place apparently at a point around
Yassooj and in the Province of Fars which was labeled the Red
Line which was not to be crossed by the central Regime forces.
Much of the unrest is said to stem from the Islamic Regime's
on-going efforts to disarm the tribes and put religious leaders
in charge of them instead of their traditional Khans. The rough
and difficult mountainous terrain, which severely limits mobile
forces and the stiff resistance put up by the tribes, have prevented
government militias from penetrating into Bakhtiari and Ghashghai
tribal areas The tribe leaders hope, perhaps somewhat premature,
that their uprising will spread south to Shiraz and Masjid Soleiman
in the Khuzestan oil province ( link to our story) and even
become a national uprising across the country.